Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy

“What’s happened to your intelligence? You should know perfectly well that this sort of responsibility doesn’t end with yourself. What about those two young creatures? The girl?”

“I didn’t bring them here.”

“No, really,” Alleyn said, going to the door, “you’re saying such very stupid things. I’ll go down to the front and see if my car’s come. Goodbye to you.”

She followed him and put her hand on his arm. “Look!” she said. “Look at me. I’m terrifying, aren’t I? A wreck? But I’ve still got more than my share of what it takes. Haven’t I?”

“For Baradi and his friends?”

“Baradi!” she said contemptuously.

“I really didn’t want to insult you with Oberon.”

“What do you know about Oberon?”

“I’ve seen him.”

She left her hand on him, but with an air of forgetfulness. A tremor communicated itself to his arm. “You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know what he’s like. Its no good thinking about him in the way you think about other men. There are hommes fatals, too, you know. He’s terrifying and he’s marvellous. You can’t understand that, can you?”

“No. To me, if he wasn’t disgusting, he’d be ludicrous. A slug of a man.”

“Do you believe in hypnotism?”

“Certainly. If the subject is willing.”

“Oh,” she said hopelessly. “I’m willing enough. Not that it’s as simple as hypnotism.” She hung her head, looking, with that gesture, like the travesty of a shamed girl. He couldn’t hear all she said but caught one phrase: “… wonderful degradation…”

“For God’s sake,” Alleyn said, “what nonsense is this?”

She frowned and looked at him out of her disastrous eyes. “Could you help me?” she said.

“I have no idea. Probably not.”

“I’m in a bad way.”

“Yes.”

“If I were to keep faith? I don’t know what you’re up to, but if I were to keep faith and not tell them who you are? Even if it ruined me? Would you think you could help me then?”

“Are you asking me if I could help you to cure yourself of drugging? I couldn’t. Only an expert could do that. If you’ve still got enough character and sense of purpose to keep faith, as you put it, perhaps you should have enough guts to go through with a cure. I don’t know.”

“I suppose you think I’m trying to bribe you?”

“In a sense — yes.”

“Do you know,” she said discontentedly, “you’re the only man I’ve ever met—” She stopped and seemed to hesitate. “I can’t get this right,” she said. “With you it’s not an act, is it?”

Alleyn smiled for the first time. “I’m not attempting the well-known gambit of rudeness introduced with a view to amorous occasions,” he said. “Is that what you mean?”

“I suppose it is.”

“You should stick to classical drama. Shakespeare’s women don’t fall for the insult-and-angry-seduction stuff. Sorry. I’m forgetting Richard III.”

“Beatrice and Benedick? Petruchio and Katharina?”

“I was excluding comedy.”

“How right you were. There’s nothing very funny about my situation.”

“No, it seems appalling.”

“What can I do? Tell me, what I can do?”

“Leave the Chèvre d’Argent today. Now, if you like. I’ve got a car outside. Go to a doctor in Paris and offer yourself for a cure. Recognize your responsibility and, before further harm can come of this place, tell me or the local commissary or anyone else in a position of authority everything you know about the people here.”

“Betray my friends?”

“A meaningless phrase. In protecting them you betray decency itself. Can you think of that child Ginny Taylor and still question what you should do.”

She stepped back from him as if he was a physical menace.

“You’re not here by accident,” she said. “You’ve planned this visit.”

“I could hardly plan a perforated appendix in an unknown maiden lady. The place and all of you speak for yourselves. Yawning your head off because you want your heroin. Pin-point pupils and leathery faces.”

She caught her breath in what sounded like a sigh of relief. “Is that all?” she said.

“I really must go. Goodbye.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t do what you ask.”

“I’m sorry.”

He opened the door. She said: “I won’t tell them what you are. But don’t come back. Don’t come back here. I’m warning you. Don’t come back.”

“Goodbye,” Alleyn said, and without encountering anyone walked out of the house and down the passage-way to the open platform.

Raoul was waiting there with the car.

ii

When she returned to the roof-garden, Annabella Wells found the men of the house party waiting for her. Dr. Baradi closed his hand softly round her arm, leading her forward.

“Don’t,” she said, “you smell of hospitals.”

Carbury Glande said: “Annabella, who is he? I mean we all know he’s Agatha Troy’s husband but, for God’s sake, who is he?”

“You know as much as I do.”

“But you said you’d crossed the Atlantic with him. You said it was a shipboard affair and one knows they don’t leave many stones unturned especially in your hands, my angel.”

“He was one of my rare failures. He talked of nothing but his wife. He spread her over the Atlantic like an overflow from the Gulf Stream. I gave him up as a bad job. A dull chap, I decided.”

“I rather liked him,” young Herrington said defiantly.

Mr. Oberon spoke for the first time. “A dangerous man,” he said. “Whoever he is and whatever he may be. Under the circumstances, a dangerous man.”

Baradi said: “I agree. The enquiry for Garbel is inexplicable.”

“Unless they are initiates,” Glande said, “and have been given the name.”

“They are not initiates,” Oberon said.

“No,” Baradi agreed.

Young Herrington said explosively: “My God, is there no other way out?”

“Ask yourself,” said Glande.

Mr. Oberon rose. “There is no other way,” he said tranquilly. “And they must not return. That at least is clear. They must not return.”

iii

As they drove back to Roqueville, Alleyn said: “You did your job well this morning, Raoul. You are, evidently, a man upon whom one may depend.”

“It pleases Monsieur to say so,” said Raoul cheerfully. “The Egyptian gentleman is also, it appears, good at his job. In wartime a medical orderly learns to recognize talent, Monsieur. Very often one saw the patients zipped up like a placket-hole. Paf ! and he’s open. Pan ! and he’s shut. But this was different.”

“Dr. Baradi is afraid that she may not recover.”

“She had not the look of death upon her.”

“Can you recognize it?”

“I fancy that I can, Monsieur.”

“Did Madame and the small one get safely to their hotel?”

“Safely, Monsieur. On the way we stopped in the Rue des Violettes. Madame inquired for Mr. Garbel.”

Alleyn said sharply: “Did she see him?”

“I understand he was not at home, Monsieur.”

“Did she leave a message?”

“I believe so, Monsieur. I saw Madame give a note to the concierge.”

“I see.”

“She is a type, that one,” Raoul said thoughtfully.

“The concierge? Do you know her?”

“Yes, Monsieur. In Roqueville all the world knows all the world. She’s an original, is old Blanche.”

“In what way?”

“ Un article défraîchi . One imagines she has other interests besides the door-keeping. To be fat is not always to be idle. But the apartments,” Raoul added politely, “are perfectly correct.” Evidently he felt it would be in bad taste to disparage the address of any friend of the Alleyns.